The Masters and the Slaves

The mist slowly lingers above the plantation's fields. Vague shapes and shadows of people can be seen across the landscape. Some ride horses. Some are pulling wagons. Some push wheelbarrows. Some work shovels, hoes, or axes on their own. Others are clustered into teams working to improve the irrigation, build a storage shelter, or construct a bridge across the creek. As the sun burns warmer across the rural patchwork the mist subsides and reveals glistening thin tendrils that are attached to each person's back. Following the web to its center one sees a grand white mansion.

Within the lower levels of the mansion are teeming masses of people, shackled to the floors and walls, waiting for other servants to issue the daily rations of food and ambrosia, which keeps them in their stupor. They gaze uncomprehendingly toward others who cast the blame for their misery to the wealthy field workers. Why should they have horses and you do not? Some of them have wagons! Why should they have first access to the food? They have enough food. They should send more of it inside the mansion.

Outside a field slave falls from his horse. Shapes emerge from the mansion, carry the slave inside, provide ambrosia and gruel as fresh glistening tendrils emerge from the floorboards, binding the field slave to the base of the mansion. As for the horse, rather than a healthy house slave being released to ride it and continue on, it removed from the fields and slaughtered. Its remains are carried to the mansion.

As one looks closer at the mansion it becomes obvious that the paint is peeling, rats have gnawed holes through baseboards and the smell of urine rises from each house slave because they are prevented from caring for their own basic needs. The winding grand staircase, however, reveals polished oak rails, waxed granite steps and a crystal chandelier suspended above the center of it's massive spiral.

A visit to each higher level of the upper floors reveals more people. Some focused on the floors below them, manipulating the comfort and pain of the house slaves by tightening or loosening the tendrils that bind them. Higher floors are filled with people holding the thin tendrils of power that emerge from the mansion to regulate and administrate the field workers. The highest levels reveal more administrators in suits who control the people below them.

An order is issued from the top floors of the mansion. Field workers must eat less of the food and send more inside the mansion. As the field workers cut back on their own sustenance, the overall productivity of the plantation begins to decline. Less food is planted, less is grown, less is harvested. Other workers collect the required quantities of food and it is delivered to the top floors of the mansion where a portion is processed into gruel and ambrosia, which is then piped down to the bottom floor to feed the masses while those on the upper floors feast.

The observer can see the pattern all too clearly. The masters punish the field slaves and confiscate their productivity. A small portion of the confiscated wealth is distributed to the masses trapped within the mansions lower levels while they are told it is the field slaves who are keeping them down. Field slaves who fail find themselves cared for not by their fellow field slaves but become house slaves, subsisting on the gruel and ambrosia that the masters provide. Each new tightening, each added restriction to the field slaves further dooms the fate of the house slaves, dooms the fate of the masters (but they will be the last to be affected).

Eventually, the master will have no choice but to eliminate the weakest of the house slaves in the name of serving the greater good, of placing the interests of the many above the few. The field slaves will revolt because they are on the verge of starving themselves and no longer have the strength to bear the burdens of the house slaves and the masters. The masters will execute the most outspoken of the field slaves, removing their most effective producers. Further shortages will emerge. Rules and regulations will be tightened. Productivity will further decline. More will go hungry.

Desperate the masters will force the house slaves into the fields, but they are weak, untrained, and unable to replace the productivity of the field slaves. Masters will eliminate unproductive workers and chaos will ensue. What was once a grand and prosperous plantation is quickly falling into ruins, awaiting an invasion from other forces eager to acquire its rich and productive land.